You Have To Show Them

What it means to be an organizer.

I spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours in a tiny cubicle in the attic of my college library. It had this old wooden ceiling that would creek when snow piled on, and again when it melted off. There were endless warmly lit rows of books. It was nearly always empty—people don’t usually gravitate to the attics of old buildings.

I always fought the tension between analyzing the world and experiencing it with my own senses. The library had such a vibe to it, that while I was there, it felt like I was doing both. The school accumulated more books than could fit on the shelves since its founding in 1868. Like the favorite menu item of a picky eater, with a wealth of options, I would always go back and read various translations of Plato’s Allegory of The Cave.

I affectionately called it, “Plato’s Caves.” I loved it before I understood it. It captured my imagination long before I knew what it meant to me. My intuition insisted it was significant. My draw to it was magnetic, it came naturally. They weren’t just words on a page, it was an entity in itself. Like knowing your way home, I still know the path from my cubical to it’s exact spot on the shelf. It goes something like this.

People are sitting side by side, strapped in place, with their heads fixed, facing the wall of the cave. Food and such is brought directly to them, they never move. Behind them, there is a walkway. People pass through, holding up wooden cutouts of figures—animals, trees, various symbols. Behind the walkway is a fire. The fire casts shadows of the cutouts onto the wall.

These people believe, truly, the shadows are all there is. Their perspective of reality is curated by people casting the shadows on the wall for them to watch. They don’t even know they’re shadows. They don’t know they are in a cave. Their entire existence is watching the shapes move around.

If someone were to break free, and exit the cave, they would endure several shocking realizations. Not only are there other humans beside them, there are humans behind them, there are wooden figures, there is fire, and an entire world outside of the cave.

Would you not have an obligation to bring the others out of the cave, and show them the world beyond it, if you were to escape? As you tried to get them to move, they would likely resist—thinking they’re being attacked. As they exit the cave, the sunlight would burn their eyes. Still, it would be wrong to leave them in the cave, knowing what you know now.

I wouldn’t say the Allegory of the Cave shapes my approach to politics and economics—it is my approach. I grew up in one of those neighborhoods where if you told people the general area, they would ask, “do you live before the streetlight, or after the streetlight?” I hated that question, I would wince knowing how their face would face when I said, “before.” They didn’t really need to ask, I had brown spots on my crooked teeth, I wore my class on my face.

My mom and dad both don’t have college degrees, it was never really in the cards for us. I got a job at 14, became President of the local FFA, took the bus around for my extra curricular activities. I didn’t care for my classes. I wasn’t going to college, what’s the point? I actually failed one from skipping it to do other stuff in the agriscience building. Luckily, my distractions from class earned me a book award—which came with leadership scholarship to Wells College.

Wells was my one shot. That’s how I saw it. Education was a ticket to more money, more stability, more fun, anything more. In that same cubicle in the attic at Wells, I didn’t yet realize I was in the cave—but I started pivoting my head. In graduate school, I became fully aware that I spent my life in the cave, strapped to a chair, watching the shadows dance. My family was still in the cave. My friends back home were in the cave. Everybody who grew up like me was, too.

Up until this point, I genuinely believed there were legitimate reason people have less than others. If you were poor, it was because you didn’t work as hard. You weren’t smart. If you were smart, and did work hard, but you were still poor, you were just unlucky. There isn’t enough to go around. Tough break.

When I finally got it, it took my eyes a while to adjust. I had to develop an intimate understanding of precisely how our economic and political systems were designed with intentional inequality to stay out of the cave. “The shadows are kind of cool!” Give me a break.

You can’t go back from realizing the inequality is baked into the structures of our social systems, you can’t ignore that the suffering is by design. A small class of elite control our capital and resources, and the rest of us are intended to be endlessly working—barely meeting our most basic needs. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I have a hard time remembering what my brain was like when I was in the cave. I can’t put myself in the mindset of watching the shadows dance, before I knew they were shadows. For a long time, I wanted to remember it. Maybe then I’d be better at convincing people who are trapped in the cave, that they’re trapped in a cave. I’d be better at explaining why it’s wrong to make people live like this to the people maintaining the cave (the wooden puppet holders and such).

Now I know that trying to convince people who maintain the cave to help pull people out of the cave is a waste of time. The only people willing to pull others out, are the people who have been trapped in the cave themselves. Trying to explain to people that they are in the cave doesn’t work, either. You can’t tell them. You have to pull them out. You have to show them.